it was early in the morning yet—before seven. folks in wicksville were just getting up, but it seemed to mark and me that we’d been awake a week. for a while we didn’t do anything but sit on the sand in front of the cave and wish we had something to eat or that somebody we could trust would come along. but there wasn’t a bit of use wishing.
“we should have had a telephone put in the cave,” i told mark. “it certainly would come in handy this morning.”
mark didn’t say anything. he just got up and went inside the cave, where he began rummaging around in the hope of finding a few potatoes we had overlooked. there were pans to cook with and fishing-tackle and ku klux klan disguises, but it was precious little good any of them did. i saw him pick up a sheet and hood and stand looking at it.
“not goin’ to try eatin’ that, are you?” i called to him.
“no,” says he. “i was just wonderin’ if we couldn’t put the klan to some good use.”
“if we could only signal to plunk an’ binney.”
“but we can’t,” he says. “what i wish is that i could get my jack-knife to uncle ike bond. he’d know it was a signal to hurry to the cave, and he would hurry.”
“that’s right,” says i. “we never used any signs on him just for fun. he warned us about that. if we could get the knife to him he’d know it was serious. but what’s the use talkin’ about it; we might as well hope for an airship to come swoopin’ down and carry us safely home.”
mark covered up the turbine with sheets and came out where i was. “let’s walk to the road again. no, i’ll go to the road, and you stay with the turbine. if anybody comes you holler like s-s-sixty.”
“all right,” says i; “but don’t be gone long.”
he climbed up to the road and sat down on a big stone under a butternut tree.
maybe fifteen minutes went along before he heard anything, and then it was a whistle from up the river way, and the tune it whistled was “marching through georgia.”
then the tin-peddler’s red wagon came into sight, with zadok biggs sitting on the seat, his head back, as we had first seen him, taking it easy, enjoying the morning, and whistling so the birds must have been jealous. maybe they thought zadok biggs was some sort of a bird himself; if they did, birds must be able to stretch their imaginations considerable.
mark never was so glad to see anybody in his life. he stepped out into the road and waited. zadok came driving along without seeing him until mark spoke; then he straightened up, looked at mark, and slapped his leg. he slapped it again and chuckled, and began talking to the horse.
“rosinante,” he says, “there he stands! there stands marcus aurelius fortunatus tidd. observe him—look at him is the way people usually say it. mind what i said about opportunity, rosinante. here stands marcus aurelius, who has had an opportunity. we shall pause—stop—shall we not, to inquire what he did with it.” he swung his little legs sideways over the edge of the seat and stared down at mark.
“opportunity,” says he, “and marcus aurelius fortunatus. um! it knocked, so to speak. were you in?”
“well,” says mark, “i wasn’t f-f-far off.”
“good! excellent! i said so. i told young martin you would not disappoint me. i would have been disappointed. i, zadok biggs, am your friend, your friend for life, and i would have been grieved. you got the—the turbine?” he shot the last question at mark like it was a pea out of a pea-blower. it came out with a sort of poof.
mark nodded. “i got it; but it ain’t safe yet.”
“so? you are perturbed—worried is the commoner word. i am not. i have confidence in you. how could one named marcus aurelius fortunatus tidd let failure roost in the nest of success? a figure of speech that, a sort of metaphor. you understand me?”
“i guess so. what i want to know is, will you do me a f-f-favor?”
“a favor? will zadok biggs do a favor for marcus aurelius! anything, even to the half of my kingdom, as the kings in the bible used to say. i am yours. command me!”
“it ain’t much. just take this jack-knife to uncle ike bond, the bus driver. give it to him and say it’s from me.”
“why,” says zadok, surprised, “what’s this.” he was disappointed, likely, at the littleness and commonness of the favor mark asked. then his long, lean face lightened up and he slapped his leg again. “i perceive—understand is the word in general use. it is a token, a signal. excellent! you are coming up to my expectations. now who would have expected this?” he leaned over so far mark thought he’d fall off the wagon, and stared at him so admiringly that mark blushed. “a remarkable lad,” zadok went on. “my friend for life. will i deliver the knife? will i? will zadok biggs? just pass it up to me and see.”
mark handed up the knife, and zadok shoved it into his pocket. then he shook the lines and waked up his horse, who had taken the opportunity to go to sleep, and started off. “i will hasten—hurry is the less dignified word. uncle ike bond shall have the knife. i shall say it comes from marcus aurelius, who knows an opportunity when he sees it. good-by. remember zadok biggs. he is your friend for life. remember him.”
we both felt a little easier in our minds with the message sent to uncle ike. of course we couldn’t tell how long he might be coming to us, for sometimes he had to drive folks into the country, and sometimes he was off fishing, so it was possible zadok biggs would have considerable bother finding him. but we knew he’d come sometime, and that was better than not having any hope at all.
“well,” says mark, “we might as well do somethin’ while we’re waitin’.”
“sure!” says i. “let’s git up a game to pass away the time.”
mark thought a minute. he was fine at getting up new games, because he had read so many histories and books of adventure. all he had to do was to remember some bully story, and right off he’d make a game out of it. “let’s pertend,” says he, “that you and me are sentinels left to g-g-guard this treasure-cave. it’s got a jewel into it as big as your fist. we’ll make b’lieve the turbine is the jewel, and it is worth more’n a billion dollars. there was a party of us captured this jewel out of a heathen temple, and everybody but us had gone to git help. we’re bein’ pursued by the heathens, and they’ve found us here, and right this minute they’re besiegin’ us. how’s that?”
“fine,” says i. “i kin see more’n fifty of ’em a-sneakin’ around down among the trees and rocks. looks to me like they was gittin’ ready to make a charge.”
“we got to git am-am-munition. if our supply gives out we’d be easy prey for em.”
so we went to work gathering sling-shot pebbles—nice smooth, round ones. we had to sally out into the open to get them, and that was taking a chance, with all those heathens shooting away at us with bows and arrows; but by ducking and dodging we made out to fill our pockets and get back safe. between us we had a couple of pecks of stones.
“there,” says mark; “that’ll stand ’em off a while.”
we got out our sling-shots just in time. the enemy was creeping up on us, thinking to take us by surprise, but we whanged away at them like sharp-shooters, and it was pretty seldom we missed. mostly we struck the heathen in vital spots, so that they threw up their arms with a screech and fell dead, rolling over down the hill. twice we stopped regular charges, and in fifteen minutes or so the foe was pretty badly discouraged.
they retreated right down to the shore of the river, where their war-canoes were, with us a-firing after them as fast as we could shoot. then for the first time we dared take a breath and look around us. it was lucky we did, for there, not a hundred yards off, were henry c. batten and bill landing out of a boat. batten looked up at us and grinned.
my stomach all of a sudden went hollow, and my knees got so weak i sat down without intending to. yes, sir, i went right down ker-plunk. those men popping up like that took the wind clean out of my sails, and no mistake. mark wasn’t any better off, either. he looked like somebody had up and poured a pitcher of ice-water down his back.
if i’d been all alone i’d have up and run, but with mark there i was ashamed to. he couldn’t run, for two reasons: first, he was too fat to go very fast; and, second, he wasn’t the running kind. we knew there was help coming, too, but how long it would be before it got here we hadn’t the faintest idea; it might come too late.
mark was scared at first, i could see it, but in a minute he got mad, real good and snapping mad, to think of all the trouble we’d had getting the engine back, and then to have these men drop in when it was most safe. it didn’t look fair any way you took it.
“tallow,” says he, “you can do what you want to, but i’m going to stay and f-f-fight.”
well, what could i do? i just took a long breath and says, “all right, mark, but i don’t see what good it’s goin’ to do.”
“they sha’n’t get that turbine as long as i kin s-s-stand up,” he stuttered.
“it looks,” says i, “as if we was in for a hard fall, then.”
batten said something to bill, and both of them started up the bank.
“git back there,” mark yells.
batten laughed out loud, which wasn’t a very good thing to do. never laugh at folks when you’ve got them cornered, because it’s likely to get their dander up, and no telling what’ll happen. it made me so mad to hear batten laugh that way that, unconscious-like, i just hauled off with my sling-shot and sailed a pebble down at him. it struck right under his feet, and he jumped like he’d been bitten.
“hey,” he yelled, “quit that, you young grampus!”
“fine,” says mark, “that’s the ticket,” and he put a stone in his sling and pelted it so it went whizzing past batten’s ear. batten stood right still, and so did bill.
“you keep away from here,” yelled mark, “or i’ll shoot straighter. g-g-git!”
“if you hit me with that thing!” calls batten, threatening-like.
“come on,” says bill; “they can’t hit us. come on.”
they started up again, but they didn’t go far, for mark whanged another pebble at them—and didn’t miss. it hit batten just above the knee, and i bet it stung like sixty. he let a holler out of him and ducked behind a tree. bill started edging around, but i stopped him with another pebble that whizzed past his head.
batten was good and mad now, and so was bill. they kept yelling back and forth at each other, but stayed all the time behind the trees where we couldn’t hit them. that satisfied us; we weren’t out to shoot anybody with our sling-shots, and didn’t want to if they’d only quit pestering us.
“young feller,” batten yelled up to mark, “put that thing down or you’ll be sorry. don’t you go shootin’ it at me again.”
“i ain’t goin’ to shoot so long’s you s-s-stay behind that tree,” says mark, “but if you start up here again i’ll p-p-paste you, and it won’t be in the leg, either.”
bill took the chance to run across an open space to another tree, and got there just in time. the pebble flicked off a chunk of the bark as he got sheltered.
“they’re tryin’ to divide,” says mark “so’s to take us on two sides. don’t let one of ’em get onto the hill above us.”
that would make it pretty bad, for it’s hard to shoot up-hill; and, besides, a man higher than we were could make it mighty hot for us by rolling things down.
“we’ll stop bill from comin’ any higher,” i says.
the best way to do that, i thought, was to give him something to think about besides climbing hills, so i looked careful down at the tree he was behind. the only part of him that stuck out was his hand, and that was gripping a sapling close to his tree to hold him from slipping, i expect, for the slope was pretty steep right there.
“watch me whang his fingers,” i says, but, honest, i didn’t have much hope of hitting them. i guess it was more good luck than good judgment; but, all the same, i took careful aim, and let her fly. the stone whizzed down and banged bill’s thumb a good one so he yelped out sharp and danced into the open, shaking his hand like he wanted to flop it off. he wasn’t exactly quiet about saying things to us, either. if he’d done to mark and me what he said he was going to do we couldn’t have been worth carrying home.
“always f-f-follow up your victories,” says mark, with a grin. “i’ll give him another while he’s feeling bad.” this one took him a clip right on the hip where his pants were tight, and bill didn’t wait around there any longer. out where he stood was a bad place, he thought, so he turned tail and made for the trees lower on the hill.
“that’s right,” yells mark; “you’ll like it better down there.”
we could see batten edging over toward bill. he was too far off for us to take a crack at him, but he went careful, just the same, with one eye on us all the time. it was pretty evident neither of them liked our sling-shots very much, and i don’t blame them. a pebble the size of a good marble stings when it’s snapped by a couple of strong rubbers. you can shoot hard enough to kill a squirrel or rabbit, and, while it wouldn’t damage a man very much, it would hurt like fury. i’ve figured it out that soldiers in a battle aren’t so much afraid of being killed or badly injured as they are of being hurt. it’s the idea of pain that scares them, and we could give batten and bill about all the pain they wanted.
“there’s only one way they can get us,” says mark, “and that’s to charge.”
“yes,” says i, “if they got the grit to keep a-comin’, no matter how hard we hit ’em, we’re beat.”
batten and bill had their heads together way down by the river. every once in a while they’d turn and look or point up to us, so we knew they were hatching up a plan of attack. after a while they stood and studied out the lay of the land.
the cave was about two-thirds up the hill. mostly the climb was pretty steep, and there were lots of big rocks and boulders and trees until you got maybe a hundred feet from the cave, and there was an open space steeper than the rest. the cave faced on a sort of shelf that stuck out maybe ten feet from the door. probably it was made by the earth that was dug out of the cave when it was made. partly that, anyhow, and partly made by cutting the face of the hill smooth and straight. when you make a snow house you generally start by heaping up snow and tamping it down till it’s about the shape of a half-orange. then when you start to hollow out and make your door, you cut away one side so it’s straight up and down—just slice it off to give you a place to begin. that’s what the folks who dug the cave had done—cut out a chunk of the hill like a big step, l-shaped, and the foot of the l was the little shelf in front of our door.
the hill went up perpendicular about six feet from the top of the door and then slanted away natural again, getting less steep as it came nearer the level ground above.
that, in a general way, is how the land lay.
batten and bill studied it over quite a while and then got their heads together again. they seemed to be arguing about something. batten smashed one hand against the other impatient-like, and it looked as though he was ordering bill to do what he wanted. we waited to see what that would be.
both the men started up the hill, but they didn’t get out from behind things any more than they had to. from one tree to another and from one boulder to the next they went slinking until they were almost at the edge of the clear space in front of the cave.
“they’re going to charge,” says mark. “get ready.”
i filled my pocket with pebbles and stood, all trembly, waiting for them to begin.
all of a sudden they both let out yells and started scrambling up toward us as fast as they could. that wasn’t very fast, on account of the steepness and loose sand and stones that kept slipping back, but they came like they had made up their minds to get us in spite of everything.
just the minute they got uncovered we began to shoot. i was surprised to see how little scared i really was when things began to happen; and mark, why, he was as cool as a cucumber, and took careful aim every time before he let fly.
we shot pretty well, too. of course, we didn’t hit every time, but we hit often enough, and the closer they came the oftener we hit. they didn’t say a word, and mark and i were too busy to speak.
they got over the first twenty-five feet all right, and started in on the next twenty-five. now they were near enough so that any fellow who could shoot at all would have hard work to miss. and we shot fast. plunk! plunk! plunk! we would hear the stones as they struck. they kept on, though, for another fifteen or twenty feet until they were only about fifty feet away and maybe forty feet lower than we were. that gave us all the advantage, of course, for it’s hard enough to climb a steep hill without having a couple of fellows peppering at you from the top.
“i’ll shoot faster than you can talk,” says i, making a little fun of his stuttering.
we did shoot fast and hard. every time i pulled back the rubber as far as it would stretch, and i bet those pebbles hurt some. they hurt more than batten and bill could stand, anyhow, for in another minute they had enough. first bill quit and went leaping down the hill; then batten, finding out he was all alone, gave up and retreated so fast mark said it was a rout.
we didn’t let them go without hurrying them along, either. just as long as they were in sight we kept on whanging at them, and i’ll make a guess that there weren’t two men in the state who had more black-and-blue spots to show than they did when they got to the bottom. we laughed so loud they could hear us when we saw them rubbing their sore places.
batten shook his fist at us, and bill roared something we couldn’t understand.
all the while they were talking together and motioning. then they turned like they were giving it up and got into their boat.
“whoop!” i yelled, “we’ve licked ’em!”
mark shook his head. “no,” he says. “it’s a—a—s-s-s-stratagem.”
“a what?” says i.
“a s-s-s-s-s—” mark started in, hissing like the exhaust of an engine.
“better try some other word,” i told him; and he grinned as good-natured as could be.
“it’s a trick,” he says.
“that’s better. leave the s’s alone when you’re excited.”
“they’re trying to make us think they’ve quit so they can s-s-s—”
“there you go.”
“sneak up on us,” he finished.
batten and bill pushed their boat off and rowed down-stream. we watched them till they went out of sight around the bend.
“i bet they’re gone,” i said.
mark only shook his head.
“i’m goin’ to see,” says i.
“go ahead, but don’t let ’em catch you. don’t go blunderin’ along. be c-careful.”
“i’ll be careful,” says i; and with that i started off along the face of the hill in the direction batten and bill had taken.
